A Hard Day's Night

It's never easy, is it?

The Yanks crushed the Red Sox in the opener of their five-game series, 12-4. That game started at 1:00, featuring Chien Ming Wang getting off his streak of bad performances to beat the inimitable Jason Johnson.

Almost twelve hours later, the Yankees were still playing baseball at Fenway. You see, the nightcap of their day/night doubleheader was the longest nine-inning game in major league history, a wild, wild one that the Yankees won, 14-11.

Yuh, that's right. Fourteen to eleven.

The standout for the day was Johnny Damon (6 for 12, 7 RBI on the day), kinda kicking all the "We'd rather have Coco Crisp" folks in Beantown right in the teeth, and Bobby Abreu, who came up huge with the bat, and reminded anyone with a disposition to whine about the Red Sox picking up Javy Lopez and Eric Hinske for a song, that the Yanks played that song first, and played that song better.

On the downside, the Yankee pitching staff is a house of horrors. The Yanks have a couple of Brand X generic righties in the pen right now--TJ Beam, Brian Bruney--and both have seen, and will likely continue to see, meaningful innings this series. The Yanks needed 9 innings of relief yesterday--a nausea-inducing spectacle. Also nasea-inducing was Kyle Farnsworth having to be helped off the field after taking a liner to the leg.

Three more games to go. Randy Johnson could put my head at ease with seven or more good innings today.